Thoth Court Card "Moral Characteristics"

I want to say thanks as well.
I find the same problem having to look up in the BoT.. I always get myself lost in some new layering I didnt consider and I think Barleywine has made very good job at tying together bits and pieces of info that is good to have together. Keep on the good work!

I've been getting tired of having to wade through the Book of Thoth every time I need insight on potential meanings for a court card in a particular situation. So I decided to boil everything down into a straight-forward table of brief terms for each card. Where Crowley's "moral characteristics" were given in "keyword" form, I recorded them verbatim; where they were more rambling and convoluted, I paraphrased them or, in extreme cases, improvised by economizing on what I think he meant. Note that I didn't attempt to modulate or sanitize Crowley's often ruthless bluntness: if he said "hopelessly stupid," that's what I captured. In addition, I attempted to incorporate his "Yi King" commentary in a way consistent with his more standard interpretations.

I'm providing this first draft here as a community service. I now have to go back through and validate everything one more time, after which I will update this post.

Thanks for this Barleywine. I can see you have captured all the relevant words. However, these days I seem to be unable to retain word lists and use them effectively in assessing a situation or personality. I am inundated with lists of words in notebooks and file folders that I have created over the years, and recently I tried to put them into one file so I could at least access them in one spot. Now I discover I don't even bother to go to the file because all the words just sort of swish around in my brain....but nothing forms from them...maybe you understand what I'm saying...but, then, you might not have this problem. I found that what I need to understand a court card is a mental picture of her or him, and how they tend to interact and react. So, with Crowley and the I Ching, Corrine Kenner, and Nancy Shavick, I wrote out a little synopsis of their personality. Here is an example of the Queen of Wands.

Queen of Wands, Water of Fire
Follows the laws of nature

An adaptable, persistent energy, and a calm authority which she knows how to use to enhance her attractiveness. She is kindly and generous but impatient of opposition. She has an immense capacity for friendship and for love, but always on her own initiative. She is the steamy combination of water and fire: energy, passion and heat. Seductive, simmering, sinewy, and surprisingly strong; gracious and wise, willfull and dynamic; confident and self-assured; spontaneous and hard to contain. She is impulsive, impatient, and impetuous; brave, bold, and downright brazen. She has a warrior spirit: driven and direct. She takes aggressive action and asserts herself in sudden and energetic bursts.

Her negative aspects are a self-complacent vanity and snobbery. She has a tendency to brood and come to wrong decisions, and then react with a great savagery, stupidity and obstinancy. She may be quick to take offense and harbor revenge without good cause.

Because of her impulsive character, aligned with a strong intuition, she tends to blurt out at people who feel victimized by her natural fiery sharpness. She battles all problems with complete strength, though her fearlessness is misunderstood by those she intimidates with her extraverted personality. This passioinate and aggressive female wants to help other people although she appears to be fighting those who cross her path. Her battle is with constricting and restricting forces and rules. She inspires creativity in everyone, but even though she may seem critical and sarcastic, this is just an aspect of her outspokeness. Her intentions are not to wound or injure, but by acting this way she rouses one into passionate action.

In the I Ching, she belongs with the 17th hexagram, Following. She accepts subordination, and by placing herself beneath the weaker yielding, she is followed by the whole world. Her lesson is to learn the meaning of the time of following. It is the fundamental principle that one must, first of all, follow in the right way if one would be followed. She succeeds and finds joyousness by following the law of nature....by learning to follow in order to lead.

The purpose of the table was for look-up rather than memorization, mainly a memory-jogger for those with some exposure to the Book of Thoth who can't quite remember the exact words but don't want to wade through the book to find them. I'm thinking of putting page-number references at the top of each section, but that may not be useful for anyone but me since there are sure to be differently numbered versions of the book out there. Mine was published by Samuel Weiser in the early '70s.

The purpose of the table was for look-up rather than memorization, mainly a memory-jogger for those with some exposure to the Book of Thoth who can't quite remember the exact words but don't want to wade through the book to find them. I'm thinking of putting page-number references at the top of each section, but that may not be useful for anyone but me since there are sure to be differently numbered versions of the book out there. Mine was published by Samuel Weiser in the early '70s.

Thanks, Michael. I remember that thread; looks like it went dormant back in early 2015, but the subject is still relevant to this discussion. I did take a few of Crowley's I Ching comments ("peculiar," as you previously put it, seems about right) and build them into the table I created, but I did nothing systematic with it because he seemed kind of scatter-shot, rambling around the subject and cherry-picking what suited his purpose.

I remember this thread too. I got the I Ching book translated by Wilhelm thanks to the thread. The book was good, and I used with the court cards, which gave deeper and richer meanings in certain occasions where needed.

But in general and daily spreads, I see the court cards as just elemental energy. I also use the Tarot of Ceremonial Magick by DuQuett which has the I Ching symbols on the court cards.

Thanks, Michael. I remember that thread; looks like it went dormant back in early 2015, but the subject is still relevant to this discussion. I did take a few of Crowley's I Ching comments ("peculiar," as you previously put it, seems about right) and build them into the table I created, but I did nothing systematic with it because he seemed kind of scatter-shot, rambling around the subject and cherry-picking what suited his purpose.

Quote:

Originally Posted by foolMoon

I remember this thread too. I got the I Ching book translated by Wilhelm thanks to the thread. The book was good, and I used with the court cards, which gave deeper and richer meanings in certain occasions where needed.

But in general and daily spreads, I see the court cards as just elemental energy. I also use the Tarot of Ceremonial Magick by DuQuett which has the I Ching symbols on the court cards.

I'm glad that you guys took some inspiration from that thread. The idea was a detailed discussion of connections between the court cards and their associated hexagrams. It didn't develop very far, but maybe it can be revived? Please post any insights you may have gotten into this topic there.

I'm glad that you guys took some inspiration from that thread. The idea was a detailed discussion of connections between the court cards and their associated hexagrams. It didn't develop very far, but maybe it can be revived? Please post any insights you may have gotten into this topic there.

The Trigram and Hexagram tables are in Liber 777. But if I can recall correctly, they are not included in BoT.

Someone suggested linking Geomancy divination to the Court cards would be another way for enriching their meaning and scope. I wonder if anyone tried it.

The Trigram and Hexagram tables are in Liber 777. But if I can recall correctly, they are not included in BoT.

Someone suggested linking Geomancy divination to the Court cards would be another way for enriching their meaning and scope. I wonder if anyone tried it.

At least one of the Thoth Minor Arcana includes a geomantic figure: Crowley points out that the 7 of Disks (Failure) presents the "ugly and menacing" geomantic figure of Rubeus. (He links it back to the 5 of Cups, but I don't recall ever pulling that particular thread.)

I worked quite a bit with geomancy in the past but never thought to try connecting it to the Thoth court cards. It has a strong positive/ negative bias that may not be a good fit for the more inclusive interpretation usually given the courts. Maybe it could be tied somehow to dignity, with each court having a "good guy" and a "bad guy" persona. I'll have to think about this one. Sixteen geomantic figures and sixteen court cards does present a tempting opportunity.

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